Stay
by Blackened Cure
Summary: Revenge exacted; a truth revealed. What has come of all this bloodshed?


_Stay_

_Destruction is at hand,_

_Running in high demand,_

_Blood in my hands,_

_Bodies at my feet,_

_Crimson eyes telling a lie for me to believe,_

_It is telling me to get out,_

_Run as far as I can,_

_And don't look back till my bones break to no end._

_I know what must happen now,_

_I just don't know how,_

_Strength far beyond my own,_

_My death simply delayed,_

_If only I knew then what I know today…_

_Time has past me too fast,_

_Reminding me how things never last,_

_Pushed in a corner by my past,_

_Making me cold and crass,_

_And I wind-up taking a twisted path,_

_Until the day I plan my attack,_

_Stricken by emotions and blinding devotion,_

_I never listened to another notion._

_I now see the truth fall to my feet,_

_His thoughts incomplete,_

_A love unspoken yet bitterly sweet,_

_My hate forgotten when our eyes meet,_

_Clearly begging for redemption,_

_All before his carnal defeat._

_Oh my dear brother,_

_What have I done?_

_Can I beg your blood for it all to be undone?_

_I would take your hand again,_

_Like I had always done,_

_Just take it day by day,_

_So please,_

_Won't you stay?_

"You owe me one, Uchiha," said the irate woman, while standing in the hospital hallway.

"Yes, Ma'am, I will repay the debt owed as soon as I am able," whispered Sasuke, hoarse from screaming in the battle beforehand.

"You had better"replied the woman sternly, who turned on her heels with a simple _click-click, _and moments later, left Sasuke in the company of his once almost-dead brother, Itachi.

Sasuke then gazed down at his supposedly still-sedated older brother, trying to find words to say to him.

Not that it mattered.

Sasuke had beat him within an inch of the man's life; even when he thought he was dead, he still kept punching him into the ground, but what had stopped him was that _Itachi was smiling._ He knew then something wasn't right; and ran, ran as fast as his legs would allow, with his brother slung over his shoulder, to the one person that he knew that could repair the damage he caused.

_Tsunade._

So it was understandable why Itachi had so many bandages wrapped around him, he looked like a mummy, and he had been heavily drugged, to the point that he should not be able to properly understand a syllable, much less a sentence.

Sasuke doubted he was even remotely awake.

Nevertheless, he settled himself onto a chair nearby and he spoke to him, despite everything that he had once harbored.

"So….." he paused.

What should he say? Should he try to apologize? Maybe offer his assistance with something…

"What?" came an unexpected reply from the stiff cast that contained his brother, surprising the other out of his tongue-tied silence.

"You're awake?" whispered Sasuke, who was stifling an informal and rather awkward hacking sound.

A deafening silence followed his inquisition.

Then came the question Sasuke was not expecting.

"Do you have your eyes?"

"Perhaps, I have not the energy to test them at the moment" Sasuke replied.

Quietness overtook them, leaving the feeling of dead air surrounding them.

"I was suppose to die" Itachi had said, being first to break the silence.

"And have Tsunade put me in for an inauguration for the enrollment to hell? No thanks" Sasuke replied wryly.

He could have sworn he heard the stick- figure cast rumble with a deep chuckle from within. Apparently, his brother was in a rare mood, a humorous one at that.

_Taking a tumble with death tends to make one lighten up, I guess, _Sasuke thought.

"You know…. you know that everyone knows what you really did now, don't you?" Sasuke sputtered, finding it harder to talk with the pain in his throat.

Another chuckle vibrated the tight-fitted bandages.

"Do they now?" Itachi stated.

Sasuke peered at the open part of the cast, finding and staring directly in his brother's eyes, who stared back at him.

"Where are we going to go from here, brother?"

Long silence stilled the room's inhabitants.

"Retrieve what was lost to us, I suppose" Itachi mumbled.

"After I pay Tsunade off," Sasuke grumbled.

"No, you need no debts with that woman" Itachi agreed.

Then they let sounds of the hospital overtake them, silence was as common as the air that they breathed, just listening to life pass by, serene in its own way, just sitting and watching and _living,_ as they should, as the family they once were, like the family they are now.

A few minutes or a few hours later, Sasuke had left his seat to retreat to his sleeping quarters, when he had suddenly stopped in the doorway of the boarding room.

"What is it?" Itachi would ask him as if it was the simplest thing in the world to ask.

"Itachi"

Itachi patiently waited for his brother to finish, no matter how long it took.

"The years have been flying by far too fast; can we make the best of what is left of them?"

Itachi smiled warmly behind the cloth covering his face, with the promise of the expression showing.

"Yes, I think we can, my brother".


End file.
